Gender and the Boundaries of Dress in Contemporary PeruSet in Arequipa during Peru's recent years of crisis, this ethnography reveals how dress creates gendered bodies. It explores why people wear clothes, why people make art, and why those things matter in a war-torn land. Blenda Femenías argues that women's clothes are key symbols of gender identity and resistance to racism. Moving between metropolitan Arequipa and rural Caylloma Province, the central characters are the Quechua- and Spanish-speaking maize farmers and alpaca herders of the Colca Valley. Their identification as Indians, whites, and mestizos emerges through locally produced garments called bordados. Because the artists who create these beautiful objects are also producers who carve an economic foothold, family workshops are vital in a nation where jobs are as scarce as peace. But ambiguity permeates all practices shaping bordados' significance. Femenías traces contemporary political and ritual applications, not only Caylloma's long-standing and violent ethnic conflicts, to the historical importance of cloth since Inca times. This is the only book about expressive culture in an Andean nation that centers on gender. In this feminist contribution to ethnography, based on twenty years' experience with Peru, including two years of intensive fieldwork, Femenías reflects on the ways gender shapes relationships among subjects, research, and representation. |
From inside the book
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... Men and women voters; a woman mayor Gerardo Vilcasan at work in his Chivay market kiosk Chivay market and church Juan de Dios Choquehuanca applies yarn to a pollera. Vest embroidered by Juan Condori and Nilda Bernal Nilda Bernal holds a ...
... men, and Cayllominos (people from Caylloma). Gender and ethnicity, I believe, are the most powerful forces shaping identity as more people migrate to Arequipa and as Caylloma's regional and national importance fluctuates. Bordados ...
... men as well as women make, and even sometimes wear, bordados? The “economy” side of the symbolic economy concept had also troubled me; it seemed too grand a term to describe the hardscrabble existence of twenty-two million struggling ...
... men, women, and sometimes children who make embroidered clothes are workers, with a stake in the financial outcome of their labors, they are often kin who give as well as sell their products. Contradictory values and categorizations, I ...
... men and women artisans take pride in making the intricate work skillfully. But the burden of representation is unevenly gendered, as different values, tasks, and images are assigned to female and male—both actual persons and conceptual ...
Contents
Traveling | |
Identity in a Region at | |
Visual Domain and Cultural Process | |
Representation and the Embodiment | |
Transvestism and Festivals as Performance | |
Ethnic Symbols and Gendered | |
Gender and Production in a Workshop | |
Exchange Identity and the Commoditization | |
Conclusion Why Women Wear Polleras | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |